Sugata Mitra | |
---|---|
Born | Sugata Mitra 12 February 1952 Calcutta, West Bengal, India |
Nationality | Indian |
Occupation | Professor |
Known for | Hole in the Wall project |
Sugata Mitra (born 12 February 1952) is an Indian computer scientist and educational theorist. He is best known for his "Hole in the Wall" experiment, and widely cited in works on literacy and education. He is Professor Emeritus at NIIT University, Rajasthan, India. A Ph.D. in theoretical physics, he retired in 2019 as Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University in England, after 13 years there including a year in 2012 as visiting professor at MIT MediaLab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. He won the TED Prize 2013. [1]
Mitra was born in a Bengali family in Calcutta, India on 12 February 1952. [2]
After earning a PhD in Solid State Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, during which time he published several papers on organic semiconductors, he went on to research battery technology at the Centre for Energy Studies in the IIT, and later at the Technische Universität, Vienna. He published a paper on a zinc-chlorine battery [3] and a speculative paper on why the human sense organs are located where they are. [4]
He then worked setting up networked computers and created the "Yellow Pages" industry in India and Bangladesh[ citation needed ]. [5]
Mitra is a leading proponent of Minimally invasive education. He has a PhD in Physics but is credited with more than 25 inventions in the area of cognitive science and education technology. [ citation needed ] [6] He was conferred the Dewang Mehta Award for Innovation in Information Technology in the year 2005. [7] [8] In September 2012 Mitra won the Leonardo European Corporate Learning Award in the "Crossing Border" category. [9] He argued that broken connections in simulated neural networks are a model for Alzheimer's disease (The effect of synaptic disconnection on bi-directional associative recall. S. Mitra, Proc. IEEE/SMC Conf., Vol.1, 989, 1994 USA).
Mitra's work at NIIT created the first curricula and pedagogy for that organisation, followed by years of research on learning styles, learning devices, several of them now patented, multimedia and new methods of learning.[ citation needed ] [10] Since the 1970s, Professor Mitra's publications and work has resulted in training and development of perhaps a million young Indians, amongst them some of the poorest children in the world. Some of this work culminated in an interest in early literacy, and the Hole in the Wall experiments.
On 3 May 2013, Mitra's TED Talk "Build a School in the Cloud" was featured in NPR's TED Radio hour on "Unstoppable Learning". In the program, Mitra discusses the "Hole in the Wall" experiment. Mitra claimed that children in the rural slums of India, many of whom had never seen a computer in their lives had, when left with computers in kiosks, taught themselves everything from "character mapping" to advanced topics such as "DNA replication" on their own, without adult assistance. He suggested this would lead to "unstoppable learning" through a "worldwide cloud" – where children would pool their knowledge and resources in the absence of adult supervision to create a world of self-promoted learning.
Mitra's statement that school is obsolete emphasizes the stagnancy of the system of education. He explains that the original Victorian academic priorities were made as such to fit the needs of the time period in regards to producing future generations of competent members of society; “[Students] must have good handwriting, because the data is handwritten; they must be able to read; and they must be able to do multiplication, division, addition and subtraction in their head”. [11] When the modern era is so equipped with technology that can be used to the advantage of both educators and their students it is imperative that the schooling system adapts the way society has. Mitra's SOLE [12] model emphasizes minimally invasive methods of teaching where broad questions are asked and students are forced to use collaborative skills, and active problem solving techniques to form hypotheses and come to conclusions on their own. His modern approach additionally perfectly emphasizes many useful academic skills; most notably creativity and innovation as well as communication and collaboration.
Mitra was the TED Prize winner in 2013. [13]
External videos | |
---|---|
Sugata Mitra explaining the Hole in Wall after winning the TED Prize. | |
The Hole in the Wall Experiment, a TED talk , 2007 | |
The Child-Driven Education, a TED talk , 2010 | |
Build a School in the Cloud, a TED talk , 2013 |
In 1999, the Hole in the Wall (HIW) experiments in children's learning, was first conducted. In the initial experiment, a computer was placed in a kiosk in a wall in a slum at Kalkaji, Delhi and children were allowed to use it freely. [14] The experiment aimed at proving that children could be taught by computers very easily without any formal training. Mitra termed this Minimally Invasive Education (MIE). The experiment has since been repeated. HIW placed some 23 kiosks in rural India. In 2004 the experiment was carried out in Cambodia. [15]
This work demonstrated that groups of children, irrespective of who or where they are, can learn to use computers and the Internet on their own with public computers in open spaces such as roads and playgrounds, even without knowing English. [16] Mitra's publication was judged the best open access publication in the world for 2005 and he was awarded the Dewang Mehta Award for innovation in IT that year.[ citation needed ] [17]
The Hole in the Wall experiment inspired Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup to write his debut novel Q & A , which later became the movie Slumdog Millionaire . [18]
Critics have questioned whether leaving computers in villages results in gains in math and other skills. [19]
In a study in Peru, with some resemblance to Sugata Mitra's studies, but many differences (number of laptops, how the pedagogic tasks were constructed etc.) Michael Trucano, found no evidence of increases in these key skills. [20] Others see the idea as a recycling of what they see as a "Dump hardware in schools, hope for magic to happen" plan. [21]
The long-term sustainability of the kiosk system has been questioned because they can fall into disrepair and abandonment unless the resources typical of a school are provided. [22] UK education researcher Donald Clark has accumulated significant support indicating that the typical fate of a site is abuse and abandonment, unless it is inside a sanctuary such as a school. Moreover, Clark found that the computers were dominated by bigger boys, excluding girls and younger students, and were mostly used for entertainment not education. [23]
In a Wired magazine article, it was claimed that a 12-year-old child – Paloma Noyola Bueno – who lived in a Mexican slum, topped the all Mexico Maths exam after her school teacher, Sergio Juarez Correa, implemented Mitra's teaching method in the classroom. It was also suggested that her class went from 0 to 63 per cent in the excellent category on the Maths exam while failing scores went from 45 percent down to 7 per cent and may have improved on other parts of the test. [24]
Nandan Mohanrao Nilekani is an Indian entrepreneur. He co-founded Infosys and is the non-executive chairman of Infosys replacing R Seshasayee and Ravi Venkatesan, who were the co-chairs of the board, on 24 August 2017. After the exit of Vishal Sikka, Nilekani was appointed as non-executive chairman of the board effective 24 August 2017. He was the chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). After a successful career at Infosys, he headed the Government of India's technology committee, TAGUP. He is a member of Indian National Congress but not active in politics as of 2019.
Minimally invasive education (MIE) is a form of learning in which children operate in unsupervised environments. The methodology arose from an experiment done by Sugata Mitra while at NIIT in 1999, often called The Hole in the Wall, which has since gone on to become a significant project with the formation of Hole in the Wall Education Limited (HiWEL), a cooperative effort between NIIT and the International Finance Corporation, employed in some 300 'learning stations', covering some 300,000 children in India and several African countries.
Rajendra Singh Pawar is an Indian entrepreneur, chairman and co-founder of NIIT Limited, established in 1981. He also founded NIIT University, a not-for-profit university in Neemrana, Rajasthan, in 2009.
Pratham is one of the largest non-governmental organisations in India. It was co-founded by Madhav Chavan and Farida Lambay. It works towards the provision of quality education to the underprivileged children in India. Established in Mumbai in 1995 to provide pre-school education to children in slums, Pratham today has interventions spread across 23 states and union territories of India and has supporting chapters in the United States, UK, Germany, Sweden, and Australia.
Swami Manohar, otherwise known as Manohar Swaminathan, is a co-founder and the CEO of PicoPeta Simputers Pvt. Ltd. He completed his undergraduate program in Electronics and Communication Engineering in Government College of Technology, Coimbatore during which he was a part of a campus team that designed an Electronic Voting machine in the year 1981, which was actually the first designed in India. After obtaining his PhD in Computer Science from Brown University he was a faculty at the University of North Carolina for two years and then was at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, between 1990 and 2005. He was on the faculty of the department of Computer Science and Automation (CSA) and the Supercomputer Education and Research Center (SERC) at the Institute. He has been a visiting faculty at Columbia University, University of Missouri and the University of Texas. While at IISc, he co-invented the Simputer, was awarded the Dewang Mehta Award for Innovation in IT, and pioneered the faculty entrepreneurship activity at IISc, which has since catalyzed similar activity in IITs and other educational institutes in India. He co-founded Strand Life Sciences, and String Labs, the first academic incubating company in India.
Anant Agarwal is an Indian computer architecture researcher. He is a professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he led the development of Alewife, an early cache coherent multiprocessor, and also has served as director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He is the founder and CTO of Tilera, a fabless semiconductor company focusing on scalable multicore embedded processor design. He also serves as the CEO of edX, a joint partnership between MIT and Harvard University that offers free online learning.
Byrana Nagappa Suresh is an Indian aerospace scientist. He serves as chancellor of the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) in Thiruvananthapuram and is an professor at ISRO Headquarters.
Bett or The Bett Show is a global series of education shows organised by Hyve Group marketing information technology in education. The flagship show is located in the UK, with satellite events in Asia & Brasil. Bett is also the global community for education technology, which hosts webinars, CPD sessions and publish articles from the leaders in education.
Kiran Karnik is a prominent Indian administrator chiefly known for his work in the broadcasting and outsourcing industries. Presently he is also serving as a director in Central board of directors of Reserve Bank of India. He is also the chairman, board of directors, of the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi (IIIT-D).
NIIT Limited (National Institute of Information Technology) is an Indian multinational skills and talent development corporation headquartered in Gurgaon, India. The company was set up in 1981 to help the nascent IT industry overcome its human resource challenges. NIIT offers training and development to individuals, enterprises and institutions.
One Peace at a Time is a film by Turk and Christy Pipkin. It was produced by The Nobelity Project and was premiered at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas, USA, on April 14, 2009. It is the sequel to the film Nobelity. It has been shown in various countries.
St. Martin's Engineering College (SMEC) is a private engineering college located in Secunderabad, Telangana, India.
Bromcom Computers plc is a British technology company, based in Bromley. It provides schools, colleges, local authorities and multi academy trusts with Cloud MIS and Finance software.
Arvind Gupta is an Indian science educator, toy inventor, author, translator and scientist. He received the civilian award Padma Shree from the Indian government on the eve of Republic Day, 2018.
Chittaranjan Mitra, popularly known as CR Mitra and CRM, was an Indian scientist who is best remembered as the second Director of the Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani (BITS). He played a pivotal role in the transformation of the institute from a local engineering college to a reputed university.
Mitra is a Bengali Hindu surname found mostly amongst the Bengali Kayastha community in the Bengal region of the Indian subcontinent. The surname may have been derived either from the Sanskrit word Mitra, meaning friend or ally, or from the name of an important Indo-Iranian deity in the Vedas and in ancient Iran.
Giri 'Pickbrain' Balasubramaniam is the founder and chief executive officer of Greycaps, India's largest on stage quizzing and knowledge service provider. He is nicknamed Pickbrain.
A Self Organized Learning Environment (SOLE) is a program designed to support self-directed education. Sugata Mitra, an education scientist, first popularized the term in 1999, referencing an approach he developed following his Hole in the Wall experiments. Mitra's experiments demonstrated that groups of kids could learn to navigate computers and the internet by themselves, and "research since then has continued to support his startling conclusion that groups of children, with access to the Internet, can learn almost anything by themselves." Starting in 2014, he's worked with and through the School in the Cloud project to support the development of SOLEs around the world, adding "Granny" mentors and Big Questions as key components of such programs.
Fei-Fei Li is a Chinese-American computer scientist, known for establishing ImageNet, the dataset that enabled rapid advances in computer vision in the 2010s. She is the Sequoia Capital professor of computer science at Stanford University and former board director at Twitter. Li is a co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and a co-director of the Stanford Vision and Learning Lab. She served as the director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory from 2013 to 2018.
Harish S. Mehta is the Founder and Executive Chairman of Onward Technologies Ltd. He is the founding member and the first elected Chairman of NASSCOM, a trade association of Indian Information Technology (IT) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry.